looking in the mirror: orientalism in music

One aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed. Television, films, and all the media's resources have forced information into more and more standardized molds. So far as the Orient is concerned, standardization and cultural stereotyping have intensified the hold of the nineteenth-century academic and imaginative demonology of "the mysterious Orient."
-Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)


By this time it should not come as a surprise that the site, both geographic and intellectual, which we call the Middle East, is seen not only as exotic, but as something erotic. It is a place where sexuality is unleashed in the absence of the civilizing impulse. No matter how many records Nancy Ajram sells in Egypt, the face of this Middle East will be the Niqaabi or the Afghan woman in the burqa (it is indicative of the problem that indeed most Westerners do not make a distinction between Arabian, Afghan, Persian, Pakistani, etc.). This eroticized vision is a necessary part of Western policy towards the region; it is a place where one's potency must be demonstrated. The violence and the eroticism cannot be separated. It is no accident that the two constant images that mesmerize the mainstream media are the militant and the sexually available, restrained woman.

This geographic erogenous zone is a place Occidentals plunder when they wish because here the rules of civilization no longer apply. It is a place that obeys only the laws of power and is thus closer to Nature, but for that reason less human. We appropriate it to ourselves at moments when our own passions seem uncontainable by the facade of civilization. This embrace of the Orient can come in a confused rush, much like passion itself, indiscriminately devouring whatever is available, expressing and managing the violence of desire by displacing onto a setting that is not one's own. Displacing it from oneself by denying that this is really who one is. This is who They are, but not I.



Sarah Brightman, "Harem", Harem (2003)

Brightman's video received (relatively mild) criticism for its mixture of Arabian and Indian images and symbols, but this really misses the point. Instead what one should see is the necessary confusion that comes of trying to make sense of the unfreedom we genuinely feel but are forced to deny and therefore must project onto someone, some-They who are, Naturally, unfree. This is repeated in the song "Free". Here the sound is not Orientalist, but the setting and theme is quintessentially so. Once again amid a group of young women in Asian clothing, this time rendered immobile, Brightman tells us of her desire to be free as she flounders in her desire to be desired. The contradiction is not, of course, in the desire for recognition, but in the dehumanizing form which that recognition apparently must take.



Sarah Brightman, "Free", Harem (2003)


Sting's collaboration with Cheb Mami bears some of the same elements. There are obvious allusions to fetishism: the concealing of the drivers face and her uniform, which repeats, in an Occidental fashion, the fantasy of the veiled Arabian woman. These themes are especially prominent, not surprisingly, in the remix version, which invokes the sexuality of the dance club. There women, now uncovered, dance in real cages, on display for the male viewer.

Yet one should not simply toss this visual experiment into the same bin of confusion with the Brightman fantasy, for at least two reasons. First, the desire of Sting to reach out to Cheb Mami is indicative of a larger and very long-standing theme in Sting's work: his internationalism, transculturalism. He constantly experiments in a variety of musical genres and sounds. Thus the incorporation of North African rai is in fact an acknowledgement of its humanity, its importance as a form of popular music. This is in stark contrast to Brightman, whose musical selections have often forgotten the reasons for their own existence and thus have to try to situate themselves within the world of popular music, reducing themselves to kitsch. Second, while the vision of "Desert Rose" is classical Orientalism, it does twist it by internalizing it. The desert is not some far away place, it turns out. The passions, violent and erotic, are not ultimately other, but are our own. The song leads back to the Occidental world and holds up a mirror to our own hypocrisy, even as Sting ends the song awash in a sea of young dancing women. The harem is not far away. It is here.



Sting and Cheb Mami, "Desert Rose", Sacred Love (2003)




Sting and Cheb Mami, "Desert Rose -- Remix", Sacred Love (2003)

-LoA

eros (an excerpt from hypatia's lost commentary on plato's phaedrus)

Gail Foster, "Passage" (2005) [acrylic on canvas]

A desire for the caress, to be touched by another - erotics: the pursuit of proximity and tenderness, the pilgrimage to the border of one's being, to the border beyond which the beloved lies.

The lover and the beloved, together in sex do not seek identity; love of the lover is never an attempt to cross the border - to have power over the body, an act of aggression, commission of violence, rape - instead it is the acknowledgment of the gift of peace (providence itself). Giving oneself over to pure vulnerability, laying down one's arms, exposure.

The erotic finds its end, not in the beloved (who is always the theme) but, in rapture and ecstasy itself. The coming together is the denouncement of identification, which would, in truth, entail the loss of identity. Ecstasy is not a passage between borders,

(for the space between us is only the necessary counter-moment to the sensuousness, voluptuousness, nakedness of the body)

but a doxology sung to that which holds the very difference between our borders inviolable: the apocalyptic shudder that promises a final end to violence will come. It commands not only 'thou shalt not kill' but also 'love one another'.

-LoA

concerning pornography: a meditation on flannery o'connor

Sharon Sprung, "Folding Chairs" (2006)

Flannery O'Connor identifies two sins of art: sentimentalism and pornography. Pornography has several characteristics, but the one that draws the most attention from her is the breakdown of the public/private split. But perhaps one should reformulate this in a couple of ways; pornography can invoke at least two distinct strategies. First, it can proceed covertly, allowing the consumer (and porn is packaged for consumption; it lives on hunger and its own ability to depersonalize the product so it can be devoured) to indulge the desire which has been defined as illicit, while allowing the conscience to comfort itself by ultimately reaffirming the taboo that is the basis for the desire, and punishing the illicit behavior. A vast majority of crime drama functions precisely in this way – enticing the consumer through access, often, to sexual fantasies, especially of violence against women (e.g., the Nicholas Cage film "8mm" to a vast majority of the episodes of 'Law and Order: SVU'). This violence/sexuality at once titillates and entertains (all the hallmarks of classic porn), but always with the expectation, and ultimately fulfillment of, the criminal's punishment: the law of masochism! In this way the consumer is allowed to explore what is a very real desire (there would not be an audience if in fact no one was entertained), given a peak into a sexual world that is not "normal", is "taboo", but reassured that they are better off without the reality (and to be clear, this is not limited to sexual entertainment – e.g., "Terminator 2" founders helplessly in this tension). In this way it offers the virtual as an escape, secretly constituting the Real as flat and empty, and thereby deflecting desire.

But more explicitly, and traditionally, pornography is the use of the Real itself for entertainment. In this way, once again, the Real is emptied of depth and made into a commodity. Yet, this is, precisely, the very basis of the capitalist understanding of labor: the belief that human actions can be disconnected from the real life of a person, abstracted and consumed. And so the extension of pornography into the work place (e.g., reality t.v.) and other areas of life is unavoidable. Capitalism is pornography – the packaging of life for sale on the basis of the old theatrical/liberal/transcendental lie that we are not what we do: the disection of life into easily digestible, disconnected and meaningless moments.

What disgusts about the pornographic – or perhaps better to say, stigmatizes those associated with it – marginalizing or re-pulsing them to a state of social exile – is that they confront, unabashedly, the founding truth of the social-economic organization of this historical moment and present it naked and undeniable; there is nothing so intimate that it cannot be sold, nothing so interior to who we are that it cannot be commodified, marketed and consumed. The pornographers (or whatever one wishes to call them), the prostitutes: these are to contemporary society what the hangman was to a previous era: the stark image of the violence on which the society secretly thrives.

Let the one without sin throw the first stone.

-LoA

the struggle, part 10

Kimberly Dow, "Charity" (2006)

nudity combines within itself starkness and the voluptuous. this is to say that there is a blinding depth to the human person which is attached to the body. the attempt to separate them is sin: either as a militant war against the body in the name of purity of spirit (mortification), or as a gross consumption which impossibly attempts to reduce the self to fleshliness (decadence). what is truly revealed by the removal of clothing, enacted before the beloved, is that modesty is essentially attached to the body and cannot be overcome, even in an act of violence. the intimacy one has with the beloved is that they recognize this truth.

it is certainly true that fashion is the public language by which we interpret persons with respect to their sex, their gender, their public role, their sexuality, etc. the freedom to remove this before another is the freedom to be have someone recognize the extent to which you are inevitably hidden.

fashion is no mere outward sign. even in nudity, as we lay aside the clothes-of-the-day, they remain attached to us, drawing attention to themselves in their absence. precisely insofar as we find ourselves alienated from society, it will be consciously present to us, invading intimacy.

the role and promise of lingerie is this: that social conventions of sexuality will remain attached to her person. they want the acknowledgement that this interpretation of sexuality remains attached to her even in her nudity. to undress will no longer be an act of rebellion against the society which alienates us from ourselves, but a submission to it. intimacy will be a public act, even when alone. it is transformed into the ritual of eroding the distinction between the self and society.

despite all these failures we continue to pursue intimacy with the beloved because it is there that one finds hope that there will have been Peace, that somehow, everything can be reconciled.

-LoA